Mea Culpa: earthquakes, plagues and celestial objects

We had a double dose of journalese in a headline last week: “Virus cases skyrocketing in India as it emerges as new epicentre of the pandemic.” Not just rocketing, but skyrocketing, in case the reader thought we meant a rocket on wheels trying to set a land speed record on salt flats. Then not just the centre of the pandemic but the epicentre, both of which are wrong in any case, as Henry Peacock pointed out.

The centre implies the place where the pandemic originated, which was probably not in India, whereas the epicentre is a geological term for the place on the surface directly above the focus of an earthquake. Obviously both words have special meanings in the language of headlines, namely “going up really, really fast” and “the very centre of the worst bit”, but normal English works better, because it is not trying so hard.

Another problem with the headline is the “it”, an unnecessary pronoun in such a short sentence, causing the reader to double back. I would end up with something like: “Virus cases rocketing as India becomes the new crisis zone of the pandemic.”

Crushed on impact: The headline on the Letters page on Monday was: “Boris Johnson knows his career after politics will be impacted by this lobbying inquiry.” Thanks to Julian Self for pointing out this bit of dull management-speak. “Affected” sounds better. It just does.

Footstepped: We used an unconventional past tense in an article about how the arts in Russia, and in particular one documentary film festival, have resisted the authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin’s government. “Year after year, the festival has treaded where others dared not,” we wrote. As Richard Thomas said, it should have been “trod”.

Lots of football pitches: Mr Thomas also noticed some clumsy surplus words in an article about the A68 iceberg, which we said “was bigger than the size of Norfolk” when it broke away from the Antarctic ice shelf. “Bigger than Norfolk” would have been enough.

Shark qualifies: In a report of a surfing competition suspended when a shark was seen off the coast of Australia, we referred to a previous occasion on which Mick Fanning had been attacked by a shark. “This time, Fanning was safely back on the beach when the shark was spotted after advancing from his elimination heat,” we said, making it sound as if the shark was taking part in the contest, as John Schluter pointed out. A simple reordering was needed: “This time, Fanning was safely back on the beach after advancing from his elimination heat when the shark was spotted.”

Lobbying or lobbied? A common problem with short headlines is that it is unclear whether someone is doing the verb, or whether it is being done to them. We had an “Inside Politics” headline: “Boris Johnson ‘constantly lobbied by phone’.” The normal reading of this would be that Johnson was lobbying other people, but we meant that he was being lobbied by people who had his personal mobile number. That headline was in a small space, and we try to avoid referring to the prime minister as “Boris”, so perhaps it should have read: “PM was ‘constantly lobbied by phone’.”